I wish I could more readily warm to Carreras’s singing of this collection of romantic operetta numbers. To be sure, it contains a choice selection of songs that are rarely blessed by a voice so firmly and beautifully produced. It is Carreras’s Spanish accent and operatic voice production that above all prove a drawback, especially in so essentially vernacular a number as “All the things you are”, in which Hammerstein’s lyric and Kern’s melody are so radiantly united. Accents are irrelevant, of course, in “This nearly was mine”, which since his South Pacific recording has belonged assuredly to Carreras’s repertory. Moreover, when he turns to his native Spanish field in the marvellous baritone of “Gipsy song” from Alonso’s La linda Tapada, Carreras really does come thrillingly into his own.
Eva Lind is briefly on hand to produce a thoroughly authentic Merry Widow waltz-duet and a convincving “Indian love call”. But where is she in “If I loved you”, in which Carreras is left duetting with the orchestra? And why, for heaven’s sake, does Carreras sing Lehar’s “Volga song” in Italian? Such questions add to my doubts, though they will scarcely trouble Carreras’s legion of fans, who will assuredly snap up this new release as eagerly as they have its predecessors. '